Gymnastics at the 1936 Summer Olympics – Men's pommel horse

This was the sixth appearance of the event, which is one of the five apparatus events held every time there were apparatus events at the Summer Olympics (no apparatus events were held in 1900, 1908, 1912, or 1920). Four of the 10 gymnasts from 1932 returned: gold medalist István Pelle of Hungary, bronze medalist Frank Haubold of the United States, fourth-place finisher Frank Cumiskey of the United States, sixth-place finisher Al Jochim of the United States, seventh-place finisher Heikki Savolainen of Finland, eighth-place finisher Ilmari Pakarinen of Finland, and ninth-place finisher Mauri Nyberg-Noroma of Finland. Eugen Mack of Switzerland was the reigning (1934) world champion and a favorite in the event.[3]

Austria, Japan, and Romania each made their debut in the men's pommel horse. The United States made its fifth appearance, most of any nation, having missed only the inaugural 1896 Games.

The gymnastics format returned to the aggregation format used in 1928 but not in 1932. Each nation entered a team of eight gymnasts (Bulgaria had only 7). All entrants in the gymnastics competitions (Erang of Luxembourg did not compete in the pommel horse) performed both a compulsory exercise and a voluntary exercise, with the scores summed to give a final total. The scores in the pommel horse were added to the other apparatus scores to give individual all-around scores; the top six individual scores on each team were summed to give a team all-around score. No separate finals were contested.[4]

The compulsory exercise was described in the Official Report:

Sidestand frontways with grip on pommels, swing right leg under left hand, scissors toward right, saving left leg under left hand, flankswing right and travel to the right to support rearways on the croup (left hand on rear pommel, right hand on croup), swing (circle) the right leg under left and right hand, dorsal swing left with ½ turn left into support rearways over the saddle, flank-swing backward under the left hand into support frontways over the pommels, swing right leg under right hand, scissors toward the left, swing left leg under right hand, circle both legs under left, right and left hand, swing right under right hand, scissors toward left, scissors toward right, swing left under left hand, circle both legs under right, left, right, left and right hand with a dorsal-swing left with ½ turn left into a side-support rearways over the croup (left hand supported with reverse undergrip on rear pommel, right hand on croup), flank-swing under left hand with ¼ turn left to cross support with both hands upon the croup, a further ¼ turn left with flank-swing right to a side-stand rearways, bending knees half deep and raising arms sideward, straighten knees and lower arms to the fundamental position. This exercise could be executed the opposite way or counter-like, but only “in toto”, not the individual parts.